By Hand London is an independent sewing pattern brand, established in 2012 and based in London, UK. We create printed and PDF sewing patterns in sizes UK 2-38* (US 00-34) for makers who like to dress up, stand out and become the masters of their own style!
We’ve also got a few sewing patterns for kids in sizes 2T-13 yrs (Little Hannah, Little Flora & Little Anna), and a pretty active blog, full of easy to follow sewing and fitting tutorials, sewalongs, pattern hacks, DIY projects and guest articles.
A little bit of history...
By Hand London was founded in 2012 by school friends Elisalex de Castro Peake and Charlotte Hintzen. Working from our kitchen tables, and riding the relatively new wave of social media to spread the word, the business grew quickly and before long we welcomed Victoria to the team and moved into our first proper studio! The building was a bit creepy and super dingy, but much magic was made, and many fun times shared there :)
With pattern sales steady and the home sewing industry blooming, we decided it was time to expand and in 2014 we launched a custom print-on-demand fabric printing service on the back of a successful Kickstarter campaign. This new chapter saw us moving into a bigger, much more professional (and much less creepy!) studio in order to house the new textile printing side of the business, along with our ever-growing catalogue of sewing patterns. Unfortunately, things didn't quite work out as we had hoped, and just over a year later we had to dramatically reassess our business. You can read about that decision in depth here, but in a nutshell: we sold the fabric printer, discontinued our paper patterns and transitioned all our patterns to PDF, and went back to working from home.
Victoria decided to leave not long after that and she moved on to pastures new (ie. a real job!). Charlotte moved to Amsterdam with her husband and their baby boy at the end of 2017 and we continued to run the business together remotely until the summer of 2018 when she decided that she had come to the end of her journey with BHL. Despite the fact that we no longer work together, Charlotte, Victoria and I are all still firm lifelong friends.
After Charlotte left, things came to a gentle plateau as I (Elisalex) kept BHL going at a pace that I could manage solo, working from home while being a single mum to my then primary school aged son. That worked out great for a while, but being the type of person who can't help but dream big, I started longing for new growth and evolution, and I really missed working with other people! Running a business on your own can be extremely lonely, and I knew I needed a team around me to bounce ideas off and help me make things happen! In September 2019, I hired Jessica, and in the 18 months that followed we re-launched our new & improved paper patterns, expanded our size range (twice!), moved out of my spare room and into a shiny new studio, and released more patterns than ever before!
That brings us to 2021, and we are about to welcome a third member of the team aboard. We have loads of new designs in the works, as well as ongoing updates to our older patterns. The last nine years have been a total rollercoaster, with unexpected twists, turns, leaps and set backs along the way, and I have no idea what the future will hold for BHL - who knows which of my big dreams will materialise, or what new paths will open up along the way - a constant reminder that all the fun is to be had on the journey, not at the destination.
Thank you for stopping by!
Elisalex & Team BHL xxx
*Not all of our patterns are available in the fully extended size range, but we are working as quickly and diligently as possible to update our existing catalogue of patterns as well as continuing to release new designs in all the sizes. Thank you so much for your support and patience throughout this process!